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Home » Instagram » Me and my boys can’t be the only ones that eat our spare water kefir grains, right? We went through a stage where they weren’t reproducing, but having tried some really dark unrefined cane sugar they are going crazy and I have so many. This lot is for my son, age 5, to munch on…he goes crazy for them!
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Me and my boys can’t be the only ones that eat our spare water kefir grains, right? We went through a stage where they weren’t reproducing, but having tried some really dark unrefined cane sugar they are going crazy and I have so many. This lot is for my son, age 5, to munch on…he goes crazy for them!

March 13, 2020 by Ali

Previous PostOne of the reasons I moved my life to Italy in my hands: easily-accessible, local, organic food. Back in the UK, it took a lot of work for me to find UK grown and milled rye flour. Here, near Florence, there’s a fully organic farm, championing ancient grains and regenerative agriculture, literally a few miles from my house. That mans I can make sourdough, 85% wholegrain, rye bread that is hyper-local. It’s what I believe food should be and I feel such deep joy at being part of its creation in my kitchen.
Next PostI’ve been making 100% wholegrain spelt sourdough pizzas for about a year now. I feel like I’ve got the dough and the fermentation sorted, but the transfer to the oven and cooking to perfection is still a work in progress (it hasn’t helped that, in that time, I’ve moved my family from the UK to Italy and we’ve passed through many kitchens!). My 5-year old loves eating the results, whatever. That makes me a happy Mumma.

Recent Posts

  • To think that Boza was banned by the Ottoman Empire several hundred years ago and here I am making it for my 7-year old son :-) . It’s just millet and sugar. Yeasties go at it and ferment the mix into delightfully-fizzy, sweet, tangy deliciousness. . It’s a great probiotic ferment to have in your foods-that-do-good-stuff-and-taste-good-too arsenal! Being dairy-free, it’s a great alternative to kefir if you can’t tolerate milk. . I have a video course that will walk you through how to make and use it. There’s a link in my linktr.ee if you want a go!
  • I found a copy of Pellegrino Artusi’s famous late 1800s cookbook for 1 Euro in my local herbalist’s shop yesterday. Turns out an old lady who is friend’s with the herbalist was decluttering. I was chuffed as I’ve been looking at it on bookshelves since we moved back here to Italy. . It’s just in time for the research I’m doing for an @ancestralkitchenpodcast episode I’m recording with @farmandhearth next week. The iconic book has three pizza recipes in it, *all* of which are sweet and have eggs in. . I feel another ‘historical myth’ needs busting (check my last post for a busted one on olive oil): . Pizza as we know it was not widespread in Italy until very recently. . @historicalitalianfood’s book confirms it. So many of the women interviewed say something along the lines of ‘I didn’t try pizza until the 80s’. . So, I say, if you want to put left over chicken on your pizza (as I have done here!) go do it. Put sweet things on it (I once at Guava on a pizza in Brazil) heck, even pineapple. Just know what the toppings will do to your base so you don’t end up all soggy (unless you want that!) . The recipe for this sourdough spelt pizza base is in my profile.
  • Chewing the Fat by @historicalitalianfood is opening my eyes to the way food *really* was in Italy 3/4 generations back. The interviews Karima has shared with women in their 80s and 90s are astounding. The lives they led, the hardships, the struggle for food, the cooking. I can’t read more than a few pages at a time as it’s so much to take in. . One of the things these women talk about over and over again is how they used animal fats. Almost every interviewee talks about lard or lardo. Olive oil was just not a ‘thing’ like we in the post-industrial, food-led-by-marketing world think it was. . I’ve been rendering lard in my own kitchen from local pigs for nearly a decade and using it in a myriad of ways. It’s a magical fat that has not made me fat. Reading the words in this book, I realise lard was and *is* normal and I stand on the shoulders of so many women. Our diets are not the only thing that have been hijacked by mainstream food systems, our history has too. . Have lard stories? Want to share them with me? I’d love to hear.
  • Bonus Episode! The 2022 Ancestral Kitchen Challenge
  • Crusty and rustic, dense and satisfying. Rye is such a delicious and easy grain to make into sourdough. There’s no gluten development, there’s no worrying about kneading. And yet it makes amazing loaves. . Here are two of my everyday rye sourdough. The recipe is on my site (go to the recipes button on my linktr.ee). I am excited to be exploring rye more this year – hoping to do a starter Q&A soon and then a video course later in the year. . Do you like rye? . Have you tried making sourdough rye at home?

Recent Comments

  • Ali on Sourdough Wholegrain Spelt Loaf
  • Elly on Video Course: Boza – The Probiotic Millet Drink
  • Deane on Sourdough Wholegrain Spelt Loaf
  • Ali on Sourdough Wholegrain Spelt Loaf
  • Lori Schneider on Sourdough Wholegrain Spelt Loaf

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